Author | Si Qi and Cheng Yage

Editor | Si Qi

"Reviving old Chinese goods" has become a small outlet in the field of consumer goods marketing.

On the one hand, the "resurgence of domestic products" stepped on the childhood memory points of the post-81s and post-91s, playing the "emotion realization card"; on the other hand, in the cognition of younger consumers of the post-91s and post-11s, these "local cool" domestic products also represented a trendy way and attitude. From "China Li Ning" to "Leaping sneakers" without exception. In the field of food and beverage, 36Kr's recent exposure to the "Hankou No.2 Factory Soda" is also a player in the field of retro tide.

The soda in Hankou No.2 Factory originated from an offline flash event in 2117. The quickly sold-out "replica" old soda made the team realize that it might be a good business, so they quickly all in.

according to the data provided by the team of Hankou No.2 Factory, the brand's annual sales in 2118 was 91 million yuan, and this year, the brand's sales are expected to reach 311 million yuan.

Consumer goods entrepreneurship is a cross-border practice for the founding team of Hankou No.2 Factory. From the data level alone, this practice has achieved the first step of success, and the soaring popularity on social networks has also made Hankou No.2 Factory a new online celebrity. Founder Kimi has her own thoughts on the development of the brand. She told 36Kr that "removing online celebrity's hat" is the next important task of the team.

before the establishment of "Hankou No.2 Factory", the founder Kimi and Li Minghe's own team operated a lifestyle experience store "Ming 19th-Lifestyle Proposal Store". This team, composed of advertising practitioners, lifestyle buyers and fashion lifestyle shop partners, transformed an old house of the Republic of China in Wuhan, and the birth of Hankou No.2 Factory was also related to it.

in August, 2117, Ming 19th-Lifestyle Proposal Store launched a "Rebirth Plan for Soda in No.2 Factory". In fact, the theme of this flash event is the urban culture of Wuhan, so the core goal of the "Rebirth Plan" is not simply to "re-carve" this old-fashioned soda.

Strictly speaking, the full name of the "No.2 Factory Soda" in the memory of local people in Wuhan is "Binjiang Soda", formerly known as Heli Soda founded by British businessmen in Wuhan, with the earliest history dating back to 1921. Because the producer of Binjiang brand soda is the state-owned Wuhan No.2 Beverage Factory, it also got the nickname "No.2 Factory soda". This is why the team chose to grab the label of "Soda in No.2 Factory" as an activity to awaken the memory of the city.

To the team's surprise, the activity of "Re-engraving Soda in No.2 Factory" was a great success: the first batch of 11,111 bottles were sold out quickly.

The replica version of the classic "No.2 Factory Soda"

The event of "recreating the old brand and returning the disappeared products to the market" has its own traffic topic attribute.

In 2117, the "Mohji Peach Juice" beverage, which was launched on the Daily Fresh Platform, also screened the circle of friends of "Beijing Children", and the "canteen" selling all kinds of snacks from students' days was the key word of the new online celebrity store in 2118.

The "feelings" behind the retro can easily catch the attention of the old-school nostalgic customers, and behind the success of this activity, the power of the "new retro hipsters" cannot be underestimated.

In this "unexpected" success, the founding team found that although there was no "Soda from No.2 Factory" in the childhood of young people born after 1995 and 11, for them, "old-fashioned" was a novelty, so young people actually bought sentimental products for their own socialization and communication, and the Soda from No.2 Factory also refreshed the social platform.

after the flash marketing campaign, the team quickly devoted themselves to the creation of the brand "Hankou No.2 Factory". Four months later, this brand, which pays tribute to lifestyle and city memory, was officially born.

This also means that after the "emotional marketing" turned on the * * * emotional switch of consumers, "Hankou No.2 Factory" also began to materialize from the theme of a flash event to a product. If the popularity of the "Second Factory Soda Rebirth Plan" is due to stepping on the city memories of local consumers in Wuhan, but as a consumer product, it is obviously unsustainable to rely solely on feelings.

a toast to the market: delivering "Wuhan flavor" to the whole country

Before contacting Hankou No.2 Factory, one of my puzzles was, "Hankou No.2 Factory" belongs to Wuhan alone, how can it inspire consumers in more regions to share the same memory? For example, a consumer in Xi 'an who embraces "Ice Peak" may not have much recognition of "Hankou No.2 Factory".

Kimi's answer is that if we want to arouse consumers' feelings, the sense of regional identity is a dimension, which is the experience of the "Second Factory Soda Rebirth Plan", and it is also a dimension around a certain cultural label, which refers to the "Hankou Second Factory" Soda. Kimi also stressed that Hankou No.2 Factory is not simply to "resurrect" an old product.

Before discussing Hankou No.2 Factory in detail, let's take a look at the basic situation of the domestic beverage market:

According to the statistical data of the Forecast and Analysis Report on Production and Marketing Demand and Investment of China Soft Drink Industry by Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, the national beverage output showed an increasing trend in the 1-3 quarter of 2118, with the cumulative sales income reaching 214 billion yuan, up 9% year-on-year, and the number of enterprises in the beverage manufacturing industry reached 6,745, just like all FMCG products.

consumers are changing too fast, but the products of most companies are relatively single. At present, they are still in a situation of "eating all kinds of products with one trick". Up to now, the leading companies in the industry have not accumulated enough energy in category savings and development, resulting in performance bottlenecks and sluggish innovation. At the end of 2118, there were only 19 SKUs on sale by China Resources Ipoh. At present, we can see the unified "Xiaoming Classmate" and Nongfu Spring's "Tea π" and "Oriental Leaves" with prices around 5 yuan.

Another trend is that "category segmentation" is becoming a new track for the beverage industry. The market performance of vegetable protein drinks, soda water and coconut water represented by soy milk is also quite good. In 2115, the sales of Vita Coco in China reached RMB 1 billion. As early as 2114, Zico, a coconut water brand owned by Coca-Cola Company, officially entered the China market. It is not difficult to find that these popular categories are also linked to "health". In addition, high-end products with a price of RMB 11 are mainly occupied by foreign brands entering China.

The core product of "Hankou No.2 Factory"

conforms to the general trend of health, and at the same time, it should be a lifestyle vane

In Kimi's own words, although the team is still a budding new player in the field of FMCG, it is also a group of "professional consumers". From the perspective of consumers, Kimi's "Hankou No.2 Factory" is a product that conforms to young people's aesthetics and matches young people's lifestyles: delicious.

the product upgrading team is first embodied in the innovation of taste and the optimization of raw materials.

carbonic acid is a product taste that young people can't give up, but it goes against the general trend of health. Consumers who can't give up Coca-Cola will take the initiative to choose the "zero degree" series, and Hankou No.2 Factory will upgrade the raw materials to ensure the taste and make those carbonic acid lovers "more at ease". In terms of raw materials, the team chose real juice concentrate instead of essence, in which the juice content of orange soda is 61%, strictly speaking, it is an aerated juice.

Looking at the price positioning, Hankou No.2 Factory has set its own price at 6-11 yuan. The prices of domestic brands are mostly below 6 yuan, while those of imported brands are above RMB 15. Therefore, there is a price gap in the middle. The price positioning of RMB 6~11 helps brands avoid the competition on both sides. From the price point of view, Hankou No.2 Factory also fits the essence of "more expensive and much better" consumption upgrade.

in addition, another reason for choosing this price segment is that the team needs to ensure product quality and subsequent channel planning from the perspective of cost.

"retro fashion" is the key word of Hankou No.2 Factory.

under the theme of "the revival of domestic products", the cultural trend of retro resurgence is also worthy of attention. After all, curiosity and recognition at the value level are also one of the motivations for consumption. For example, the new pants band, which has just been known to the public through "The Summer of the Band", is not only engaged in rock music, but also promoting domestic culture. In 2118, Pang Kuan, the founder member, founded ByeByeDisco to promote China's retro culture through stores, products and exhibitions.

Back to the products of Hankou No.2 Factory, in addition to the glass bottle material, the label style is easily reminiscent of the old Shanghai style advertising poster in the 1921s.

If health is the pursuit of young people on the quality level, then from the brand value attribute, from the perspective of "retro trend", Hankou No.2 Factory will directly point its target customers to "young hipsters", and then start to build the brand image of "unwilling to be mediocre".

Marketing is a sector that the founding team is good at, and the "flash" marketing of the brand is naturally brought into full play, attracting both eyes and gold. In terms of market actions, a series of activities that conform to the brand tonality make the brand image quickly take shape and quickly open its popularity among the target "young hipsters". For example, we cooperated with Li Ning to launch customized drinks, participate in music festivals and other offline activities, and invited female rapper groups to endorse the brand.

Cross-border cooperation between Hankou No.2 Factory and Li Ning

Channel layout: accurate user group-oriented, offline first and online later

Although it was born in Wuhan, Hankou No.2 Factory concentrated its efforts on first-tier cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen, followed by cities with tourism attributes such as Xi 'an and Chengdu. In these urban areas, the team also focused on high-end retail channels such as convenience stores, Boxma Xiansheng and China Resources Ole.

As mentioned earlier, Hankou No.2 Factory has targeted its target customers at "young hipsters". At the same time, these people are also concerned about product quality, have knowledge and are willing to pay a certain premium for quality products. Their consumption and lifestyle determine their purchase channels, so Hankou No.2 Factory chooses to enter these channels to get in touch with its potential users.

Of course, whether it is the choice of cities or the layout of channels, we can also answer the question "How does Wuhan flavor go to the whole country?".

the reason why we can enter these channels is that the price positioning of 6~11 yuan actually enables Hankou No.2 Factory to give distributors higher profits, which are even higher than those of FMCG.

after completing the offline exposure and accumulation, the official flagship store of Hankou No.2 Factory was officially launched on June 24th this year, and the team started its own online layout.

It is not difficult to find that all emerging beverage brands seem to be taking a channel path from offline to online. Before another emerging beverage brand "Yuanmian Forest" entered online, its channel laying efforts were also focused on chain convenience store systems in first-and second-tier cities, such as convenience bees in Beijing and Today convenience store in Wuhan.

the appeal of "de-online celebrity" VS the "traffic anxiety" of new consumer brands

We regard the aforementioned cross-border marketing and flash as an attempt by Hankou No.2 Factory at the Branding level, with the goal of strengthening consumers' recognition of brand value. For FMCG, beyond the Branding level, the more practical appeal is, how to generate more exposure and reach?

"Flow" is an issue that cannot be avoided in the current consumer brand entrepreneurship. Hankou No.2 Factory is no exception.

Although born with "online celebrity gene", "online celebrity" not only means enough attention, but also implies the risk of limited life cycle and unsustainable brand potential. So Kimi told 36Kr that "going to online celebrity" has been the team's goal recently.

The "de-online celebrity" of Hankou No.2 Factory is more about how to strengthen its product strength, which is not in contradiction with the "traffic anxiety" of new brands. After all, the difference between new consumer brands and traditional giants is that they can quickly find their own accurate people and "intelligently" complete the conversion of users with some "levers".

In fact, the relatively unique product design has provided the first-Mover advantage for Hankou No.2 Factory. Furthermore, Hankou No.2 Factory has divided its product line into two categories: flow model and regular model. The team hopes to gain consumers' continuous attention to the whole brand of "Hankou No.2 Factory" by constantly launching "flow-money" products with their own topics and communication capabilities, and finally form their minds and drive the sales of conventional products.

This month, the brand has listed a "steam-carrying" bottle that can be drawn by lottery, from inspirational soda to "orange juice soda as a souvenir of the city" to "love soda bottle" and then to "face-changing bottle" meow soda. Obviously, this series of new products meet all the elements of "online celebrity products" in terms of design, product interaction and social communication. The compact speed of new products and event marketing have enabled Hankou No.2 Factory to maintain a high retention for its social media popularity.

The continuous introduction of traffic products not only represents the product capability of the team and the control degree in the supply chain, but also helps the brand to actively market, expose and spread. For normal SKUs such as "inspirational soda" (litchi soda), the team will not promote too many topics.

Quick innovation is not only to win the brand's "attention", but also from the perspective of product optimization: in 36Kr's "Research Report on New Consumer Forces", we also mentioned that entrepreneurs of new consumer brands began to iterate their products just like Internet products.

traditional beverage enterprises inevitably encounter the problem of slow product iteration, which is behind the mismatch between the whole process mechanism and the offline consumption environment. My understanding is that in the product combination of "flow money" and "regular money", "flow money" can also be regarded as a "public beta" link before the product is officially launched.

of course, the more novel brand image also gives "Hankou No.2 Factory" an advantage to enter emerging channels. After all, the strong communication nature of products can also bring in-store traffic for offline channels.

in order to prove the rise of new consumption forces, we have brought a research report | 2119 New Consumption in China ①

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I'm Si Qi, 36Kr, and I pay attention to everything related to new consumption. Welcome to bring it with me.